The problem with radioactive money is its half life, so you are going to lose half of the value of your stock pile every once in a while, also it's dangerous and difficult to handle and it is a controlled substance. So that makes it pretty hard to use as money.
1. gold is not an investment, it doesn't pay dividends to hold money. But it is a store of value, and it prevents the inflation tax. Unfortunately you are wrong, it's not as easy (for US and other citizens, I am just talking in general here, not being specific to any particular nation) to hold real money as a hedge against inflation because the governments hate this property of gold and of other assets and so they instrumented the confiscatory capital gains policy.
If you hold 100 ounces of gold for 10 years, you are not growing your gold, you are not going to have 110 ounces in 10 years. However government creates inflation and because of that the relative value of your gold savings are increasing in the fiat currency and when you end up selling, if you do everything legally, then you are supposed to pay the capital gains tax.
But you didn't gain any capital, you just protected your money against inflation.
Income taxes are clearly a way for government to steal your private property, that's all it is.
2. Artificial inflation caused by currency printing IS evil, it makes the poor even poorer. It transfer wealth from the poorest people, living on fixed incomes towards people who are able to save themselves with asset purchases. It causes prices to rise.
Here is a comment I made, which shows that the real worry that Americans have is not about the housing market, unemployment or taxes, it's about inflation and rising prices.
As to economics, all of your Keynesian charlatans could be replaced with one single talking parrot, spouting one phrase, day in, day out: print more money.
What is required in civilization is actually not public schooling but real education, and public schooling is preventing real education from taking place. There is no real education, there is no 'reasoning' by the way. I did say comprehension, that's a very important thing that can be taught. Teaching somebody to reason is a level above that, and since I did point out that the current public school system cannot even guarantee that the high school graduates are able to read (and comprehend what they are reading), write and do arithmetic, then how can you argue that the public school system is providing the necessary level of education?
As to requiring things by law - that is clearly allowing the government to stampede all over your individual freedoms. AFAIC there should be no government in education, in health care, in any type of loan and insurance business, in labour, in money and in illegal undeclared wars and militarism for the sake of militarism and for the sake of military industrial complex. There should be no subsidies to anybody for any reason, it is up to the individuals and businesses to do what is in their best interest and the technocrats who want to run our lives should be kept out of governments in the first place.
No, the prices went down despite government, not because of it.
With every new innovation, every improvement in materials, every new idea and with every increase in efficiency at the assembly lines (using robots for most tasks rather than people and all other capital investments), the private sector decreased cost of production by decreasing amount of time human labour is required to build a car and by speeding up the manufacturing, by introducing better design ideas that do the same thing.
Using plastics and other synthetics instead of metals, leather, wood for many parts of interior, using electronics where more mechanical systems were used previously (fuel injection for example instead of carburators). Using modern technologies for building engines, completely automated painting of the body, even automated installers of parts.
As to interstate highways, I wrote that comment years ago, so I you are again, wrong in yet another way. Infrastructure was/is subsidized, that's true, who is to say that without government intervention into the free market within the last 100 years we all wouldn't be flying instead of driving on roads, like Jetsons?
Yes, gov't interferes with free market, however your point is still invalid. Even just during the years 1911 to 1917 Ford motor company lowered prices on their cars a number of times, thus this was happening regardless of any government intervention into infrastructure.
The same thing can be said about every other product, not just cars. All products would cost much less today if it wasn't for gov't intervention, including inflation.
Given that inflation (money printing) killed 99% of value of the dollar since 1913, when 1 ounce of gold was 19USD and today 1 ounce is about 1750, even that has to be compounded, given how much productivity was destroyed, prevented from ever materializing just given all the government spending based on inflation that crowded out private sector spending. Given that, the prices for cars and all other products would have been dramatically lower today if for the last 100 years there was no gov't intervention.
What does this have to do with 'government gold'? I am not talking about government, I am talking about money of the people. The sellers want to get something that would not devalue by the time they complete the transaction and the sellers will have to shell out something like that to get their goods.
Also how is that different for "people from the outside" from what they can do today already? Don't you own any gold and silver? Did you have to go to a country that uses those metals as coins to get them?
What's the problem today? You can get delivery if you buy a few ounces as well. Actually the exact opposite would happen, all sorts of people would bring their own money to Iran and their private sector would restart their economy.
How exactly does your point contradict my comment? I am saying that the public school system today cannot graduate students from high school who can read (and comprehend what they are reading), write and do basic arithmetic proficiently. Are you one of those kids, because you are not able to understand the simple point in my comment?
Nonsense, the price of suits and cars and everything went down because of government subsidies and central planning.
- nonsense. The prices of suits and cars and everything went down despite government central planning, not because of it.
A car company came up with an idea of a seat belt, that gave the company a way to market its car as a safer vehicle. Gov't comes in and mandates that all cars must have seat belts, in fact laws are passed so that no car can be sold and used without a seat belt, immediately prices go up by the cost of producing and installing seat belts for all cars, and it's compounded by the mandate, which allows somebody to make more money than they would on those seat belts if it was simply free market driven.
An agricultural product, like cotton is subsidized by government, thus preventing competition among various countries for the same product and so the prices of cotton are stuck high while they could be much lower, thus the price for a suit is immediately affected.
Government passes 'minimum wage law', immediately all industries are affected.
Inflation affects every transaction, since half of every transaction is money.
Free market is not here in totality, but there are pockets of freer market and there are gradations of freedom. Computers and mobile phones are in a much freer market than agriculture or insurance for instance, thus prices are falling all the time.
Plastic surgery, veterinarian care, lasic eye surgery and such are much less regulated than other health care and insurance prodcuts and so the prices there are falling or not rising as the rest of the industry.
The government causes prices to be higher than they would otherwise would be and this means that if there was actual free market here for the last 100 years, the prices of cars and prices of suits and of all other things would be at least half what they are currently, but likely even lower than that. I am basing the 1/2 number on the 19th century, which increased the value of dollar by a factor of 2, but since it's not a linear progression, it must be a much faster decline in prices given freer market, because again, things compound.
No, governments got the world off of gold not because 'there was not enough gold', but because governments want to print money with impunity. What Nixon could have done, if he wasn't just a thief (like all other politicians) was to devalue the dollar back in 1971 from 19 dollars per ounce of gold to about 100 dollars per ounce.
What governments are prevented from doing with a real money backing the fiat currency is living on debt (until the eventual and most likely inevitable fiat currency destruction), that's the actual reason why governments hate real money.
Saying that there is not enough gold to back all currencies is silly. An ounce at 1760 or an ounce at 17000 or an ounce at 17000000 it does not matter, that's just a relative value.
A good tailored suit cost about an ounce of gold back in 1910 and it's a bit less than an ounce of gold today, because of improvements in productivity. A car cost about 20 ounces back in 1914 and it can be bought for less than that today. All prices for all made consumer goods go down because of increased productivity and efficiency, that's what the free market does.
Government sets artificial price floors and price ceilings, destroys the balance and prevents true price discovery.
Those are public schools, he is talking about, yes?
In a public school system you will not have real innovation (except for bringing everybody down to the common lowest denominator, which means dumbing everything down).
Personally I am against all public schools completely (and against everything else done by government that is not dealing with protection of individual liberties), but if public schools should exist, how about keeping their job to a minimum: first 3 classes.
Teach the kids the most basic fundamentals: READING (and very importantly comprehending). WRITING. ARITHMETIC.
That's it. Let the public schools just do that, but at least insist that they do that right, at least insist that they can take a student in and within 3 years achieve complete proficiency in 3 simple things. How about that, is that too much for public schools today?
If the students cannot do those 3 things proficiently after they finish high school, what chance is there that they can do anything beyond that at all?
If everybody can at least be made proficient in those 3 skills within 3 years, then all further education should be left up to the parents and the students themselves. They should be able to choose what to do next.
That's my view on it. There is no reason to bother the students with Chemistry who cannot fucking read.
But their economy tanked already, that is the reason for the currency crisis. It's the same thing as is happening with USA, except the embargo in Iran is happening now, and the 'embargo' that USA will experience will be the result of the producers refusing to take dollars for their productive output. I gave a more complete answer in a couple of comments already.
I replied to that. In reality inflation is the result of spending that is not backed by production, and Iranian government is doing all sorts of spending that cannot be backed by production, especially given the embargo. It's a command economy, central planning, total collectivism, lack of private enterprise, lack of free market, lack of business and production. That's the problem.
But my argument in that link was that Iran didn't get there all by itself, when Iran tried to be democratic, it was pushed back onto this authoritarian path by the supposed 'democracies' of the world (US, UK) in 1953. So they went militaristic and that's the main reason for their central planning right now - to try and protect themselves from the real enemies around them, who want to divide their resources without actually taking into the account the Iranians themselves.
The value of money is being inflated away by the government, that is spending something it cannot back by production (and thus taxes) and this reflects in the prices and eventually in the devalued, destroyed currency.
Precisely the same thing is happening in USA, except that there is no embargo (yet). The USA embargo WILL happen once the interest rates go up and foreigners decide to stop subsidizing USA with their production and stop buying up US dollars. Then the same thing will happen in USA.
My point is that the best way out of it is to drop government as monetary and economic authority and go full free market instead.
And who says anything about Iranian government using precious metal reserves for this?
I am saying that left to their own devices, people would use the best money that they can (the sellers will require the best money that they can get, the buyers will have to present it in order to buy anything).
. Because trading in pure precious metal would require salt sized grains (at best) for any reasonable transaction, with the price of metal in today's market.
- we are on/., right? A tech site supposedly?
A credit or a debit card backed with anything is better than a any fiat. And as to cash, people will figure it out, you don't need to wreck your own brains for them, they'll exchange.
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By the way, remember where this came from: "bring your chicken to a doctor"? It was a good one, funny one supposedly.
Then all of a sudden Obama came out with: contraceptives must be provided by health insurance companies mandate. So when a lady talked about bartering in chickens, everybody was laughing their asses off.
How come they are not laughing their asses off when it's about: pay your employees in condoms?
There is no need for a 'gold standard', it should be just gold. Obviously gold is money but other commodities can be used for exchange as well, since all of them can be traded, and you don't need to see the trade, because you can use a debit card, a visa, your mobile phone or paypal or whatever.
People will figure out what to use as cash, but in today's society using real money as money is easier than ever before in history of this planet.
With modern technology gold is the most obvious choice for money and nobody needs to carry it in their pockets, it's called a debit card, except instead of any fiat currency it would be backed by an account with some gold, silver, or in fact whatever.
Gresham's is a problem for countries that enforce an artificial high value on low value fiat and the head is not 'ugly', it's a beautiful consequence of the ugly rising head of the government. My point is exactly that the people should be deciding what money is, not any central government.
No, it's what happens when you run a command controlled economy, central planning everything, collectivizing various military spending rather than allowing free market to work.
Then it became obvious to the Iranians that they must protect themselves and they built a bigger collectivized command economy, centrally planned around military force for protection. But this means that there is no free market in Iran, there is no space for other types of development in the private sector.
Whoever here pretends that Iran is in this situation by its own volition are either ignorant of the history or are simply lying.
What I suggest Iranians do right now is switch to gold as their money and trade oil for gold.
The transition is going to be difficult only because of the embargo but if they do that, they'll see a huge influx of capital investment and this just may be their root to avoid a war, because many businesses from around the world will immediately take a second look at Iran and this will have a political impact, business interests always do.
There is nothing new that we can learn from Iran. Hyperinflation is what governments create with their top down economies, central banks and printing presses.
People have no problem figuring out what to use as money. After the Anti-Communist Civil War in Somalia the currency that the country used to have is still being used, except it's not used in single bills, people roll a bunch of bills together into stacks and use that. It works because nobody is printing the old Somalian currency and so the supply doesn't change and it's easily recognisable.
It's called Mint, they switch to Gold, Silver, other metal coins, it's not difficult at all, all ancient civilizations figured it out, I don't believe Iran is such a backwards country that they can't make coins.
As to banks - it's about time this year that another country had a currency crisis where the banks were shown for what they are: engines of inflation. Central banks need to be abolished, that's what should happen.
People WILL create their own money, nobody needs to tell them what to use as money.
The big lie you're adhering to is that the grass is production, when in fact the grass is actually a combination of the zebra's hunger or demand (what it wants) and the zebra's fundamental ability to actually walk over to the grass
- you will go far in this life.
Grass is a result of Zebra's demand and hunger? If Grass didn't exist there wouldn't have been Zebras that prospered on eating Grass. Ever. There could have been other Zebras, that ate whatever, tree leaves, and they would have been known as Giraffes, but they wouldn't be Zebras.
There wouldn't have been any animals that ate Grass if Grass didn't exist.
Grass came to existence much before any Zebras occurred on this planet. There wouldn't have been any dinosaurs that ate grass either.
Just like if there was no Sun and Earth first, there wouldn't have been anything that populated it eventually. All consumption comes after production.
Consumption of iPhones was absolutely impossible before iPhones were created. Steve Jobs and Apple had no idea that their cell phone was going to sell, they made a leap of faith and they did their best to come up with a product that they thought would be in demand once it was produced, but there was no such demand for iPhones or for iPads or for iPods or for personal computers for that matter, that Woz and Jobs started building in their garage.
They had no idea there would be a real market. Sure sure, some people built their own computers and were interested in them, but there was no market, there was no industry for any of it.
In fact HP didn't see a market for Apple I when Woz showed it to them and HP was in business of various computer like devices.
The big lie that you adhere to is that consumers drive production. You bought into this nonsense hook line and sinker and you are pushing it with this Hanauer guy, you like his message, it corresponds to yours, and logic be damned.
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As to your complaints that jobs flow overseas, maybe you should pose a question: why? Why are jobs leaving?
I can tell you, but obviously you are not in the same logical space as I am, so I don't believe you will get it.
Jobs are leaving because it is a simple economic fact: those businesses that provide the cheapest and most plentiful product win and those who do not die. Under these conditions all government intervention that increases costs pushes jobs to where the costs are lower. All government regulations, taxes and (very importantly) inflation - money printing, is destructive to capital formation and to expansion of production. It is destructive to finding new efficiencies in the markets, it is destructive to cutting costs, and cutting costs is the most important thing that grows business, expands business in its own market and allows business to reach more consumers, to grow the market share, to build upon that market share and to increase its own capacity.
Re-investment of productivity into more productivity is done by businesses, not by consumers, not by governments. Businesses are doing it in order to make more profits. Profits are the most moral engine of economy, since in the absence of government intervention profits result from voluntary exchange of productivity of individuals within the rule of law, and the law is not supposed to interfere with productivity, it's supposed to only limit crime and fraud.
You are as wrong as Hanauer, consumers do not have any such thing as 'disposable income' without working for companies. ALL wealth is created by companies, every productive job is created by businesses, not by consumers.
Consumers only can consume what businesses produce and businesses do not know, nobody knows that if they make another chair or another computer that it will be bought. But that's not even the point. The point is that it is businesses that come first or more precisely, it is production that comes first.
Hanauer actually made a very specific metaphor, he said: there are Zebras and Lions and Grass, and he said: Lions don't make Zebras and Zebras don't make Grass.
Yeah, but Grass IS production, grass has to be produced before Zebras can eat it. Hanauer doesn't understand that.
Zebras have to be produced before Lions eat them. Hanauer doesn't understand that.
If he understands that, he definitely made sure to cover up that fact. Grass has to be produced and it has to exist before Zebras can eat Grass, it doesn't even matter how grass is produced, but what does matter is that Mit has to be grass and not paper money.
It's about production, it's not about paper money. Another stupid point by Hanauer was constantly pointing at places like Somalia, saying that it is just like USA was in 19th century, which is pure nonsense.
In fact many people confuse these, but those people are totally ignorant and turned off their brains long ago (if they ever had brains). Somalia does not have a Federal government in the first place, it doesn't have a Constitution. Somalians fought a bloody civil war to get rid of their Communist government that was destroying the country (and before Communists it was a British colony).
Somalia doesn't have any freedoms that USA used to have in 19 century (certainly before 1913), so comparing these is ludicrous. Modern day Hong-Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and mainland China are much closer to what USA used to be like in 19th century than any place without a Constitution and freedoms guaranteed by Constitution, like Somalia, which was raped by various governments of the world for ages.
I don't care about your quotes of bastards and things, what I do care about is the actual truth and you should listen to that interview that I linked in totality and including the post interview review of what Hanauer said by Schiff.
What I am telling you that after listening to that interview, I bought a premium subscription to Schiffs radio show, because if even people like Hanauer, who made plenty of money are such economic morons, then Schiff's radio show must be supported and stay on the air, because we are surrounded by ignorant and stupid people.
Nick Hanauer interview (part 1, part 2) with Peter Schiff was THE reason why I bought a premium subscription to Schiff radio show.
Let me be absolutely clear on this: Nick Hanauer is the kind of an idiot that can make money while being absolutely ignorant on economics.
Consumers do NOT build businesses, businessmen build businesses. Consumption is the trivial consequence of production, and just like the case with every other business and product, the product has to be invented and built first and there is absolutely no clear way to know that the product or a business will be a success.
Growing an existing successful and profitable business into a more profitable one is much simpler than starting a new business with a new idea and an unproven track record. The only thing that can be said about demand is that if a business is already successful and profitable, then there is at least money to attempt and expand capacity.
Nick Hanauer is an absolute moron when it comes to economics, he thinks that the consumer appears first. As if the people appeared BEFORE the Sun and the Earth was here.
CPI numbers rose in September by 6/10 of 1% (by government numbers), same as a month before.
Annualize and compound it, that's just under 8%, and that's excluding all the things that people actually really need to buy almost every day (food, energy).
That's inflation, will there be a question on this?
Voting? What, you still believe in nonsense like that?
It's called lobbying. In a corrupt system the only way to fight for yourself is by the mechanisms that are provided by the system.
As long as the people vote for 1 or the 2 sides of the same coin, nothing at all will change voluntarily, and people are really really really stupid for the most part, so it's not like everybody will all of a sudden switch to Libertarian principles of freedom.
Thus it's actually called lobbying, which means bribing.
P.S. My grandmother was the reason I even got into computers in the first place, back when I was probably 9 or 10y.o., she bought and sent me a book (we lived far away for 6 years), that was a children's story about computers and computer programming written from POV of a some kid that needed to solve a mystery of some sort and the only way to solve it for him was to get through various tasks, which dealt with computer organization, some algorithms, writing some code. Since I didn't have a computer at the time, I started writing code on paper.
My grandmother later had a stroke and spent 5 years in a partial coma (half awake) before dying, pretty sad. I am thinking maybe an infinite loop is in order.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with radioactive money is its half life, so you are going to lose half of the value of your stock pile every once in a while, also it's dangerous and difficult to handle and it is a controlled substance. So that makes it pretty hard to use as money.
1. gold is not an investment, it doesn't pay dividends to hold money. But it is a store of value, and it prevents the inflation tax. Unfortunately you are wrong, it's not as easy (for US and other citizens, I am just talking in general here, not being specific to any particular nation) to hold real money as a hedge against inflation because the governments hate this property of gold and of other assets and so they instrumented the confiscatory capital gains policy.
If you hold 100 ounces of gold for 10 years, you are not growing your gold, you are not going to have 110 ounces in 10 years. However government creates inflation and because of that the relative value of your gold savings are increasing in the fiat currency and when you end up selling, if you do everything legally, then you are supposed to pay the capital gains tax.
But you didn't gain any capital, you just protected your money against inflation.
Income taxes are clearly a way for government to steal your private property, that's all it is.
2. Artificial inflation caused by currency printing IS evil, it makes the poor even poorer. It transfer wealth from the poorest people, living on fixed incomes towards people who are able to save themselves with asset purchases. It causes prices to rise.
Here is a comment I made, which shows that the real worry that Americans have is not about the housing market, unemployment or taxes, it's about inflation and rising prices.
As to economics, all of your Keynesian charlatans could be replaced with one single talking parrot, spouting one phrase, day in, day out: print more money.
What is required in civilization is actually not public schooling but real education, and public schooling is preventing real education from taking place. There is no real education, there is no 'reasoning' by the way. I did say comprehension, that's a very important thing that can be taught. Teaching somebody to reason is a level above that, and since I did point out that the current public school system cannot even guarantee that the high school graduates are able to read (and comprehend what they are reading), write and do arithmetic, then how can you argue that the public school system is providing the necessary level of education?
As to requiring things by law - that is clearly allowing the government to stampede all over your individual freedoms. AFAIC there should be no government in education, in health care, in any type of loan and insurance business, in labour, in money and in illegal undeclared wars and militarism for the sake of militarism and for the sake of military industrial complex. There should be no subsidies to anybody for any reason, it is up to the individuals and businesses to do what is in their best interest and the technocrats who want to run our lives should be kept out of governments in the first place.
No, the prices went down despite government, not because of it.
With every new innovation, every improvement in materials, every new idea and with every increase in efficiency at the assembly lines (using robots for most tasks rather than people and all other capital investments), the private sector decreased cost of production by decreasing amount of time human labour is required to build a car and by speeding up the manufacturing, by introducing better design ideas that do the same thing.
Using plastics and other synthetics instead of metals, leather, wood for many parts of interior, using electronics where more mechanical systems were used previously (fuel injection for example instead of carburators). Using modern technologies for building engines, completely automated painting of the body, even automated installers of parts.
As to interstate highways, I wrote that comment years ago, so I you are again, wrong in yet another way. Infrastructure was/is subsidized, that's true, who is to say that without government intervention into the free market within the last 100 years we all wouldn't be flying instead of driving on roads, like Jetsons?
Yes, gov't interferes with free market, however your point is still invalid. Even just during the years 1911 to 1917 Ford motor company lowered prices on their cars a number of times, thus this was happening regardless of any government intervention into infrastructure.
The same thing can be said about every other product, not just cars. All products would cost much less today if it wasn't for gov't intervention, including inflation.
Given that inflation (money printing) killed 99% of value of the dollar since 1913, when 1 ounce of gold was 19USD and today 1 ounce is about 1750, even that has to be compounded, given how much productivity was destroyed, prevented from ever materializing just given all the government spending based on inflation that crowded out private sector spending. Given that, the prices for cars and all other products would have been dramatically lower today if for the last 100 years there was no gov't intervention.
What does this have to do with 'government gold'? I am not talking about government, I am talking about money of the people. The sellers want to get something that would not devalue by the time they complete the transaction and the sellers will have to shell out something like that to get their goods.
Also how is that different for "people from the outside" from what they can do today already? Don't you own any gold and silver? Did you have to go to a country that uses those metals as coins to get them?
What's the problem today? You can get delivery if you buy a few ounces as well. Actually the exact opposite would happen, all sorts of people would bring their own money to Iran and their private sector would restart their economy.
How exactly does your point contradict my comment? I am saying that the public school system today cannot graduate students from high school who can read (and comprehend what they are reading), write and do basic arithmetic proficiently. Are you one of those kids, because you are not able to understand the simple point in my comment?
Nonsense, the price of suits and cars and everything went down because of government subsidies and central planning.
- nonsense. The prices of suits and cars and everything went down despite government central planning, not because of it.
A car company came up with an idea of a seat belt, that gave the company a way to market its car as a safer vehicle. Gov't comes in and mandates that all cars must have seat belts, in fact laws are passed so that no car can be sold and used without a seat belt, immediately prices go up by the cost of producing and installing seat belts for all cars, and it's compounded by the mandate, which allows somebody to make more money than they would on those seat belts if it was simply free market driven.
An agricultural product, like cotton is subsidized by government, thus preventing competition among various countries for the same product and so the prices of cotton are stuck high while they could be much lower, thus the price for a suit is immediately affected.
Government passes 'minimum wage law', immediately all industries are affected.
Inflation affects every transaction, since half of every transaction is money.
Free market is not here in totality, but there are pockets of freer market and there are gradations of freedom. Computers and mobile phones are in a much freer market than agriculture or insurance for instance, thus prices are falling all the time.
Plastic surgery, veterinarian care, lasic eye surgery and such are much less regulated than other health care and insurance prodcuts and so the prices there are falling or not rising as the rest of the industry.
The government causes prices to be higher than they would otherwise would be and this means that if there was actual free market here for the last 100 years, the prices of cars and prices of suits and of all other things would be at least half what they are currently, but likely even lower than that. I am basing the 1/2 number on the 19th century, which increased the value of dollar by a factor of 2, but since it's not a linear progression, it must be a much faster decline in prices given freer market, because again, things compound.
No, governments got the world off of gold not because 'there was not enough gold', but because governments want to print money with impunity. What Nixon could have done, if he wasn't just a thief (like all other politicians) was to devalue the dollar back in 1971 from 19 dollars per ounce of gold to about 100 dollars per ounce.
What governments are prevented from doing with a real money backing the fiat currency is living on debt (until the eventual and most likely inevitable fiat currency destruction), that's the actual reason why governments hate real money.
Saying that there is not enough gold to back all currencies is silly. An ounce at 1760 or an ounce at 17000 or an ounce at 17000000 it does not matter, that's just a relative value.
A good tailored suit cost about an ounce of gold back in 1910 and it's a bit less than an ounce of gold today, because of improvements in productivity. A car cost about 20 ounces back in 1914 and it can be bought for less than that today. All prices for all made consumer goods go down because of increased productivity and efficiency, that's what the free market does.
Government sets artificial price floors and price ceilings, destroys the balance and prevents true price discovery.
Those are public schools, he is talking about, yes?
In a public school system you will not have real innovation (except for bringing everybody down to the common lowest denominator, which means dumbing everything down).
Personally I am against all public schools completely (and against everything else done by government that is not dealing with protection of individual liberties), but if public schools should exist, how about keeping their job to a minimum: first 3 classes.
Teach the kids the most basic fundamentals: READING (and very importantly comprehending). WRITING. ARITHMETIC.
That's it. Let the public schools just do that, but at least insist that they do that right, at least insist that they can take a student in and within 3 years achieve complete proficiency in 3 simple things. How about that, is that too much for public schools today?
Yes it is! Actually today public schools churn out kids that cannot READ, WRITE, do ARITHMETIC.
If the students cannot do those 3 things proficiently after they finish high school, what chance is there that they can do anything beyond that at all?
If everybody can at least be made proficient in those 3 skills within 3 years, then all further education should be left up to the parents and the students themselves. They should be able to choose what to do next.
That's my view on it. There is no reason to bother the students with Chemistry who cannot fucking read.
But their economy tanked already, that is the reason for the currency crisis. It's the same thing as is happening with USA, except the embargo in Iran is happening now, and the 'embargo' that USA will experience will be the result of the producers refusing to take dollars for their productive output. I gave a more complete answer in a couple of comments already.
I replied to that. In reality inflation is the result of spending that is not backed by production, and Iranian government is doing all sorts of spending that cannot be backed by production, especially given the embargo. It's a command economy, central planning, total collectivism, lack of private enterprise, lack of free market, lack of business and production. That's the problem.
But my argument in that link was that Iran didn't get there all by itself, when Iran tried to be democratic, it was pushed back onto this authoritarian path by the supposed 'democracies' of the world (US, UK) in 1953. So they went militaristic and that's the main reason for their central planning right now - to try and protect themselves from the real enemies around them, who want to divide their resources without actually taking into the account the Iranians themselves.
The value of money is being inflated away by the government, that is spending something it cannot back by production (and thus taxes) and this reflects in the prices and eventually in the devalued, destroyed currency.
Precisely the same thing is happening in USA, except that there is no embargo (yet). The USA embargo WILL happen once the interest rates go up and foreigners decide to stop subsidizing USA with their production and stop buying up US dollars. Then the same thing will happen in USA.
My point is that the best way out of it is to drop government as monetary and economic authority and go full free market instead.
And who says anything about Iranian government using precious metal reserves for this?
I am saying that left to their own devices, people would use the best money that they can (the sellers will require the best money that they can get, the buyers will have to present it in order to buy anything).
. Because trading in pure precious metal would require salt sized grains (at best) for any reasonable transaction, with the price of metal in today's market.
- we are on /., right? A tech site supposedly?
A credit or a debit card backed with anything is better than a any fiat. And as to cash, people will figure it out, you don't need to wreck your own brains for them, they'll exchange.
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By the way, remember where this came from: "bring your chicken to a doctor"? It was a good one, funny one supposedly.
Then all of a sudden Obama came out with: contraceptives must be provided by health insurance companies mandate. So when a lady talked about bartering in chickens, everybody was laughing their asses off.
How come they are not laughing their asses off when it's about: pay your employees in condoms?
There is no need for a 'gold standard', it should be just gold. Obviously gold is money but other commodities can be used for exchange as well, since all of them can be traded, and you don't need to see the trade, because you can use a debit card, a visa, your mobile phone or paypal or whatever.
People will figure out what to use as cash, but in today's society using real money as money is easier than ever before in history of this planet.
With modern technology gold is the most obvious choice for money and nobody needs to carry it in their pockets, it's called a debit card, except instead of any fiat currency it would be backed by an account with some gold, silver, or in fact whatever.
Gresham's is a problem for countries that enforce an artificial high value on low value fiat and the head is not 'ugly', it's a beautiful consequence of the ugly rising head of the government. My point is exactly that the people should be deciding what money is, not any central government.
No, it's what happens when you run a command controlled economy, central planning everything, collectivizing various military spending rather than allowing free market to work.
Of-course Iran is put into a precarious situation by the very fact that it has a very lucrative while dangerous natural resource underneath it. Dangerous, because it was already an indirect cause of destruction of secular democratically elected government in Iran.
But it is also dangerous because it makes the entire economy dependent on it. The problem in Iran right now is that it is not producing so much of what it wants to buy and it's not trading oil like it used to. It's dependent on too many imports and its exports are very limited right now, given the embargo.
However Iran is placed into this situation by various external forces. When Iran did create a democratic government, it was destroyed by those external forces.
Then it became obvious to the Iranians that they must protect themselves and they built a bigger collectivized command economy, centrally planned around military force for protection. But this means that there is no free market in Iran, there is no space for other types of development in the private sector.
Whoever here pretends that Iran is in this situation by its own volition are either ignorant of the history or are simply lying.
What I suggest Iranians do right now is switch to gold as their money and trade oil for gold.
The transition is going to be difficult only because of the embargo but if they do that, they'll see a huge influx of capital investment and this just may be their root to avoid a war, because many businesses from around the world will immediately take a second look at Iran and this will have a political impact, business interests always do.
There is nothing new that we can learn from Iran. Hyperinflation is what governments create with their top down economies, central banks and printing presses.
People have no problem figuring out what to use as money. After the Anti-Communist Civil War in Somalia the currency that the country used to have is still being used, except it's not used in single bills, people roll a bunch of bills together into stacks and use that. It works because nobody is printing the old Somalian currency and so the supply doesn't change and it's easily recognisable.
Ha ha ha ha ha, 'unprecidented'? :)
It's called Mint, they switch to Gold, Silver, other metal coins, it's not difficult at all, all ancient civilizations figured it out, I don't believe Iran is such a backwards country that they can't make coins.
As to banks - it's about time this year that another country had a currency crisis where the banks were shown for what they are: engines of inflation. Central banks need to be abolished, that's what should happen.
People WILL create their own money, nobody needs to tell them what to use as money.
The big lie you're adhering to is that the grass is production, when in fact the grass is actually a combination of the zebra's hunger or demand (what it wants) and the zebra's fundamental ability to actually walk over to the grass
- you will go far in this life.
Grass is a result of Zebra's demand and hunger? If Grass didn't exist there wouldn't have been Zebras that prospered on eating Grass. Ever. There could have been other Zebras, that ate whatever, tree leaves, and they would have been known as Giraffes, but they wouldn't be Zebras.
There wouldn't have been any animals that ate Grass if Grass didn't exist.
Grass came to existence much before any Zebras occurred on this planet. There wouldn't have been any dinosaurs that ate grass either.
Just like if there was no Sun and Earth first, there wouldn't have been anything that populated it eventually. All consumption comes after production.
Consumption of iPhones was absolutely impossible before iPhones were created. Steve Jobs and Apple had no idea that their cell phone was going to sell, they made a leap of faith and they did their best to come up with a product that they thought would be in demand once it was produced, but there was no such demand for iPhones or for iPads or for iPods or for personal computers for that matter, that Woz and Jobs started building in their garage.
They had no idea there would be a real market. Sure sure, some people built their own computers and were interested in them, but there was no market, there was no industry for any of it.
In fact HP didn't see a market for Apple I when Woz showed it to them and HP was in business of various computer like devices.
The big lie that you adhere to is that consumers drive production. You bought into this nonsense hook line and sinker and you are pushing it with this Hanauer guy, you like his message, it corresponds to yours, and logic be damned.
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As to your complaints that jobs flow overseas, maybe you should pose a question: why? Why are jobs leaving?
I can tell you, but obviously you are not in the same logical space as I am, so I don't believe you will get it.
Jobs are leaving because it is a simple economic fact: those businesses that provide the cheapest and most plentiful product win and those who do not die. Under these conditions all government intervention that increases costs pushes jobs to where the costs are lower. All government regulations, taxes and (very importantly) inflation - money printing, is destructive to capital formation and to expansion of production. It is destructive to finding new efficiencies in the markets, it is destructive to cutting costs, and cutting costs is the most important thing that grows business, expands business in its own market and allows business to reach more consumers, to grow the market share, to build upon that market share and to increase its own capacity.
Re-investment of productivity into more productivity is done by businesses, not by consumers, not by governments. Businesses are doing it in order to make more profits. Profits are the most moral engine of economy, since in the absence of government intervention profits result from voluntary exchange of productivity of individuals within the rule of law, and the law is not supposed to interfere with productivity, it's supposed to only limit crime and fraud.
Found it, here is the entire interview, with Schiff's comments after it (it's in the second hour).
You are as wrong as Hanauer, consumers do not have any such thing as 'disposable income' without working for companies. ALL wealth is created by companies, every productive job is created by businesses, not by consumers.
Consumers only can consume what businesses produce and businesses do not know, nobody knows that if they make another chair or another computer that it will be bought. But that's not even the point. The point is that it is businesses that come first or more precisely, it is production that comes first.
Hanauer actually made a very specific metaphor, he said: there are Zebras and Lions and Grass, and he said: Lions don't make Zebras and Zebras don't make Grass.
Yeah, but Grass IS production, grass has to be produced before Zebras can eat it. Hanauer doesn't understand that.
Zebras have to be produced before Lions eat them. Hanauer doesn't understand that.
If he understands that, he definitely made sure to cover up that fact. Grass has to be produced and it has to exist before Zebras can eat Grass, it doesn't even matter how grass is produced, but what does matter is that Mit has to be grass and not paper money.
It's about production, it's not about paper money. Another stupid point by Hanauer was constantly pointing at places like Somalia, saying that it is just like USA was in 19th century, which is pure nonsense.
In fact many people confuse these, but those people are totally ignorant and turned off their brains long ago (if they ever had brains). Somalia does not have a Federal government in the first place, it doesn't have a Constitution. Somalians fought a bloody civil war to get rid of their Communist government that was destroying the country (and before Communists it was a British colony).
Somalia doesn't have any freedoms that USA used to have in 19 century (certainly before 1913), so comparing these is ludicrous. Modern day Hong-Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and mainland China are much closer to what USA used to be like in 19th century than any place without a Constitution and freedoms guaranteed by Constitution, like Somalia, which was raped by various governments of the world for ages.
I don't care about your quotes of bastards and things, what I do care about is the actual truth and you should listen to that interview that I linked in totality and including the post interview review of what Hanauer said by Schiff.
What I am telling you that after listening to that interview, I bought a premium subscription to Schiffs radio show, because if even people like Hanauer, who made plenty of money are such economic morons, then Schiff's radio show must be supported and stay on the air, because we are surrounded by ignorant and stupid people.
Nick Hanauer interview (part 1, part 2) with Peter Schiff was THE reason why I bought a premium subscription to Schiff radio show.
Let me be absolutely clear on this: Nick Hanauer is the kind of an idiot that can make money while being absolutely ignorant on economics.
Consumers do NOT build businesses, businessmen build businesses. Consumption is the trivial consequence of production, and just like the case with every other business and product, the product has to be invented and built first and there is absolutely no clear way to know that the product or a business will be a success.
Growing an existing successful and profitable business into a more profitable one is much simpler than starting a new business with a new idea and an unproven track record. The only thing that can be said about demand is that if a business is already successful and profitable, then there is at least money to attempt and expand capacity.
Nick Hanauer is an absolute moron when it comes to economics, he thinks that the consumer appears first. As if the people appeared BEFORE the Sun and the Earth was here.
CPI numbers rose in September by 6/10 of 1% (by government numbers), same as a month before.
Annualize and compound it, that's just under 8%, and that's excluding all the things that people actually really need to buy almost every day (food, energy).
That's inflation, will there be a question on this?
Voting? What, you still believe in nonsense like that?
It's called lobbying. In a corrupt system the only way to fight for yourself is by the mechanisms that are provided by the system.
As long as the people vote for 1 or the 2 sides of the same coin, nothing at all will change voluntarily, and people are really really really stupid for the most part, so it's not like everybody will all of a sudden switch to Libertarian principles of freedom.
Thus it's actually called lobbying, which means bribing.
May I suggest an infinite loop?
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Sorry, too soon?
P.S. My grandmother was the reason I even got into computers in the first place, back when I was probably 9 or 10y.o., she bought and sent me a book (we lived far away for 6 years), that was a children's story about computers and computer programming written from POV of a some kid that needed to solve a mystery of some sort and the only way to solve it for him was to get through various tasks, which dealt with computer organization, some algorithms, writing some code. Since I didn't have a computer at the time, I started writing code on paper.
My grandmother later had a stroke and spent 5 years in a partial coma (half awake) before dying, pretty sad. I am thinking maybe an infinite loop is in order.
Or those may be emerging properties if the Universe wasn't actually coded into what it is, but instead 'evolved' into it.